Marketing and Management Thoughts

Michael Bierut is one of the partners at Pentagram (one of the most well known agencies in the design/advertising world). He spoke at the 99% conference and gave an insightful talk on how he has designed over the years. Not bad for a guy who says that he isn’t creative, but just loves solving problems.

“Remember who you’re doing it for, and why you’re doing it and you will not go wrong.” – Michael Bierut

The 5 Tips

1. Listen first, then design
2. Don’t Avoid the Obvious
3. The Problem Contains the Solution
4. Indulge your Obsession
5. Love is the Answer

(via 99%)

For many people the idea of social media seems to be a fad or something that is inconsequential in today’s society. For much of the last decade it was seen as the place for teens and unproductive young adults. Today it has become a force to recon with. This video pulls together some amazing statistics on just how social media is transforming our culture and our world.

This reality is on of the driving forces behind many NGO projects like the One Laptop Per Child program designed to decrease the digital divide between the haves and the have not’s. It is this same reality that makes the online presence of your church so important.

So, what is your church doing to be a part of the Social Media Revolution?

Let us know in the comments below.

Video by Socialnomics – Sources

There is something about being inspired by beautiful things that is just amazing, encouraging, and musing. Here are two videos that are visually stunning.

Kuroshio Sea – 2nd largest aquarium tank in the world

Niagara Falls in Motion

Communicating the meaning and value of an idea (and the Gospel) has been a goal for as long as civilization has existed. This video takes a look at some of the physiological factors that cause our brains to create meaning. Understanding this can help us create more impacting messages and better forms of communication.

Watch the 6 minute video for all the details

Keys to help the brain understand meaning are:

1. Use Images to Clarify Ideas
2. Interact with images to create engagement
3. Augment Memory with Persistent & Evolving Views

If you have been reading here for a while you’ll know that I love the TED conference (Technology Education and Design). I love even more that I don’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to attend plus the cost of room+board and can instead watch video of the talks online or through iTunes.

One of the hardest parts of communication revolves around things that are so much bigger than we are. How do you communicate realities that are out of our grasp. This often has to do with large numbers (number of stars/people/bottles used etc), or with abstract concepts.

This video will inspire you as it does a brilliant job conveying a number of statistics in a visually complimentary way to the imagery already exists in the voice over/script. You’d be missing out not to watch it.

Recently I came across the twitter feed of Erwin McManus, pastor of Mosaic Church in LA. He was lucky enough to attend the annual TED conference (Technology, Education, and Design) which I follow closely through their videos (Highly Recommended). TED is a conference of the best and brightest sharing the latest and greatest from their fields. This leads to many inspiring and challenging talks.

Erwin captures that excitement in the first of these two tweets. Which were given in succession to one another.

Sitting at TED So inspiring. So I thought I would invite you into my TED experience. Today has wonderfully reaffirmed my passion to awaken humanity. February 5

Then the following day this he posted this. (more…)

I have been spending far to many nights lately working that I missed Louis CK (personal – wiki) on Conan O’Brien last week. I want to hear your thoughts.

Louis hit right on the head the entitlement mentality of the majority of Americans under the age of 30. Not only have we never faced any major struggles (as a society), our parents grew up in a similar circumstance except that they had their parents harping on them about the war (WWII). Yes Vietnam was a tragedy for our nation, but it is drastically different than Iraq/Afghanistan in terms of social/cultural impact.

Not only are some of his lines great (“You’re sitting in a chair, in the SKY!”) and potential illustration material, he has address what I believe to be one of the underlying things the current recession has touched on. That we believe we should never have to cut back, or to choose between several ‘good’ things, and that paired with a lack of appreciation spells a recipe for hard times ahead.

This video has been making its rounds on the web, and I’m interested to hear what you feel Louis is touching on during his interview.

(hat nod - swissmiss & DEtF )

We wrote about the re-design failure of Tropicana last week and this week the older style packaging should be showing back up on the store shelves. This video is from CNN showing a discussion over the new brand image. There is a fruitful interview with Linda Kaplan Thaler of the Kaplan Thaler Group Ltd.

While your church doesn’t have the market penetration and exposure that a brand like Tropicana does (or the $35 Million to dump into a re branding strategy) it does raise one last question I believe could prove beneficial for the church.

At what point does the church (any church) change their approach of ministry or marketing due to the response of those around them? Would it take five complaints? fifty? hundreds?

(hat nod Visual Culture)

Little of us know the extent to which the work of men like Saul Bass (a personal hero of mine) have had on the visual language the world around us speaks. Saul was the first to use moving title sequences in film. Today these sequences have come light years from the early roots.

Title sequences can be great for video announcements or promotions, and for creating clean, simple, and easy to understand flash animations for a church website.

The top five title sequences of the year according to the NY Times are: (more…)

With the current financial crisis on the news and minds of everyone day in and day out. This ten minute video does a very good job at explaining the macro-economic cause/effect of the crisis and how we got to where we are today, without all the technical jargon.

If you are a minister and don’t understand the crisis. This is worth your time. The people you minister too will be thankful you took time to understand how things got where they are. (more…)